SEO Knowledge Base
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Keywords
What are search
engine keywords and key phrases?
How do you decide
which are the best target phrases to go after?
Optimising Web Pages
What are meta tags?
Do alt tags help with
search engine rankings?
What Are Meta Tags?
Most web pages are split in two parts if you
look at the html code that defines the page. The
part that you see in your browser is the body
of the page and the start and finish of that part
of the page is defined by the "body tag". This
is seen in the code as <body> and </body>,
one at the start of the body and the other end.
Not surprisingly the other part of the page is
called the head tag, starting with <head>
and ending with </head>.
The body tag contains the visible part of the
page whilst the head tag contains elements that
you will not see in your browser. Within the head
tag are various other "tags" whose purpose in
the main is to help search engines decide what
your site is all about. That might make you think
these tags are the be all and all for search engine
rankings but, whilst that was once close to true,
it is hardly the case any more. They have been
manipulated by unscrupulous marketeers to gain
unwarranted visitors and so are now devalued.
But they still matter enough to get them set up
correctly.
Which Meta Tags Matter?
There are loads of meta tags in existence and
some web designers use as many as they can. There
is a revisit tag that is supposed to tell a search
engine how often to come back for a fresh look
at the site, there is a generator tag that announces
what software was used to develop the page and
many more! However only a handful are of any use
and I recommend that none be used but the following:
title: This is used by most
search engines. It should always be the first
tag after the head tag. It should have between
5 and 8 words and these should include your key
words and phrases, ideally at the beginning. It
should be set up differently, with different keywords,
for each page on oyur site. It should never say
"welcome to our web site" because that is just
too hackneyed and trite to be true!
description: This is still used
by some search engines and should be the second
meta tag. It should have between 15 and 30 words
and include more important keywords. It should
read well also and give a reason for coming to
your site as most search engines will display
it.
keywords: Should have about
20 to 25 words that are important to your site.
You should avoid repetition of any one word if
possible. You should vary the number of words
in here on different pages. Have the keywords
seperated by spaces on one page, by commas on
another and have them in upper case on another
page. Always have at least one page with plenty
of keywords in the first paragraph and NO keyword
tag. Don't put much faith in these getting you
good rankings.
robots: Use the robots tag to
tell seach engines which pages to index and which
not. Don't let the search engine spider your terms
and conditions of sale or privacy policy. Whatever
it takes from them will always be different to
the rest of your site and so dilute the overall
"theme" that the spider will see.
NB: APART FROM THESE MY ADVICE IS TO
REMOVE ALL OTHER TAGS FROM THE HEAD
To see how the meta tags for this page have been
set up just click on "View" and then "Source"
and at the top of the page you will see the head
tag.
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